


Fake it

by surprisedreader



Series: Of wolves and witches [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Denial, Emotional Hurt, M/M, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Witch Jonathan Toews, demon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 22:49:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7732852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surprisedreader/pseuds/surprisedreader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick trying to deal with himself after the Jamie Benn confrontation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fake it

Jonny tasted like the ether. Like static and copper and the hum of power. He tasted like sweat and hard work and flushed skin.

 He tasted like a ley line. 

Patrick didn’t know how he knew that. How did his tounge know the subtle hints of power and otherworld

All he knew is there were days he licked his way across Jonny’s abs, nipped the plump parts of his hips, dragged his teeth along the captains breast bone and thought ‘home’ followed almost always by ‘hungry’.

Jonny knows. He had to know. He had been watching Patrick closer. Staying near by and placing gentle guiding hands on Patrick’s back when he watched someone's chest for too long. 

He was ok. He was fine really it was just a new quirk he'd picked up lately. Listening to people's heart thump thump thump behind their rib cage. It wasn’t a big deal. Hockey players had all kinds of weird habits. Supernaturals and humans alike were known to do stranger things. 

 So what if Patrick had the urge to press his ear to people's chest every now and again. So what if he could suddenly tell just by looking, just by listening to the thump thump of someone's heart who was supernatural and who wasn’t.

Maybe his stupid human lizard brain was just kicking in. Maybe he had always been able to tell and he was just being hypersensitive to it right now after the thing with Jamie fucking Benn. 

God he was hungry. 

Jonny didn't bring it up. After Jamie Benn went back to his own state and Tyler Seguin slunk back off to lick at his wounds in private again Jonny never said a word. 

Patrick opened his mouth to explain the morning it happened. ‘It's not what it looks like.’

‘I'm normal.’

‘I'm human. I swear to God I'm human.’

‘The guy deserved it.’

“It was only one heart.’

But nothing came out accept an embarrassing choked back sobbing noise.

‘Easy.’ Jonny had whispered approaching him slowly. ‘Easy Pat. You're fine. We’re fine.’

Patrick had shaken his head his body felt like it was trembling. Like his bones would rattle themselves right out of their sockets.

Fuck he was so hungry.  

Jonny pulled him in. Slow and easy and sweet, holding Patrick tight like the winger might try and run. ‘Everything is alright.’ Jonny had whispered into his hair; hands running soothing paths up and down his back.  

The witches heart was a steady thump-thump thump-thump under Patrick’s ear. Strong. Steady. Powerful. Everything was alright. Everything would be fine if Jonny just kept holding him together. 

Jonny had taken up making strange foods after that.

Liver and onions. Kidney casserole. Cow brains that Jonny swore were good for them. Something called sweetbread which was in fact neither sweet nor bread. On one disastrous occasion tongue. Nothing could stop Patrick from cracking blow job jokes that night, he laughed and laughed until he was nearly sick with it. 

He wasn’t laughing when Jon placed a plate in front of him that had a heart on it.

 Perfectly seared and stuffed with onions, mushrooms garlic and spinach.

“What is this?” Patrick had asked.  His voice sounded wrong. High and panicky. There was sweat breaking out across his brow and his lower back. Something in his gut tightened.

“Beef heart. It's high in B vitamins and iron. It’s got some good fats and is high in protein-“

“Jon!” Patrick’s voice came out strangled and Jonathan paused. He knelt next to Patrick and put a hand on his thigh making him finally look away from the plate in front of him down at Jon who was looking back at him earnestly. “It’s high in cholesterol so I can't make it all the time…but every now and again? When we have a taste for it?”

Jon was trying to hold off Patrick’s hunger with animal organs.

 He knew.

 He knew what Patrick had done in Biel. He knew there was something wrong with the hunger that was gnawing away inside him in a place that wasn’t his stomach. He knew Jamie Benn had been on to something. 

Patrick cried. He cried and let Jonny hold him and rock him and listened to the pounding of his witch heart steady and strong until he felt empty inside. 

He ate the cow heart. 

It didn't help. 

After that Jonny stopped cooking organs and instead started reminding people Patrick was human. They were a part of one of the largest packs in the NHL it wasn’t like people forgot the few human members of the crew but Jonny started throwing it out there whenever he could. ‘Be easy rough housing with the human Shawzy. He doesn't heal like you.’

‘Make Patrick change the diaper Sharpy. It’s not like he can even smell it anyway with his dull little human nose.’

‘Its just witch humor Pat you would need a better knowledge of the supernatural to understand.’

Patrick knew what Jonny was doing. He wasn’t dumb. He was trying to reaffirm Patricks humanity. Verbally remind him that he was fine.  That everything was okay. 

But it wasn’t. 

The more Jonny tried to reassure him the more Patrick felt wrong inside. The more he noticed how far he was slipping from being alright. 

Maybe he wasn't fine. 

Maybe he wasn't…human. 

The thought had sent him running out of crowded rooms more than once. Breathless and panicked and something dangerously close to either acceptance or defeat rattling around in his chest. 

He had taken up calling him mom whenever it happened. Skin flushed and clammy, head resting on the cool sheet rock that made up most hallways. She wasn't dumb. She knew something was wrong but when she pressed for answers Patrick opened his mouth and nothing came out. 

How do you ask if your life was a lie? How do you look back on 20 odd years of memories and scars absolute knowledge of who you are and say “Was any of it real?”

“Am I really your son?” 

“Am I even really human?”

Or even just admit aloud. “I don't think I'm ok.”

Patrick had started staring at himself in the mirror. ‘what’s your name?’ Jamie Benn had asked him. Stuck in a magic trap and feeling compelled to reply he had answered. “Patrick Timothy Kane.” It was his name. It was true even but it wasn’t what Benn had been looking for and  even though Patrick knew his name to be true, knew he couldn’t have even said it aloud if it hadn’t been with all the magic Benn had been slamming into that circle, he also knew in the deepest part of himself that wasn’t his only name. It wasn’t what he had always been called.

“What is your name?” He asked his reflection. It never answered.

But sometimes when he looked away he would swear it smiled. 

He was close to something. Close to an answer for a question he never knew he had needed to ask. A question he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask.

Eventually he went home for the summer. Jonny hadn’t been happy about it but they always went home between seasons. The witch couldn't come up with a reason for Patrick not to go; not without outright saying what they were both thinking.  

Maybe he shouldn’t go.

Maybe he needed to be watched.

Maybe things weren’t really ok.

Maybe he was being mean. He knew why Jonny wanted him to stay in Chi town. He knew Jonny was afraid of what Patrick might do without the Canadian there. But Patrick wasn’t going to bend. 

He wasn’t ready to fully admit that maybe he wasn’t who he thought he was; maybe he wasn’t what he thought he was. 

Patrick was refusing to admit anything was even slightly off without making Jonny say it first. So what if Patrick started spending more nights with Jon than away. So what if he needed the witches hands holding him to feel safe enough to sleep. So what if it wasn’t the things that went bump in the night that scared him any more but the fact that he realized he might be the one bumping.

It wasn’t real if no one said it out loud.

It wasn’t happening if neither of them addressed it.

And he wouldn't. There was no way he would say anything, Jonny was still hoping things could go back to normal. That Tyler Seguin would disappear and the Jamie Benn would fall off the face of the earth and Patrick would stop chewing the inside of his cheek when they passed every other witch, were or wyrm.

Jonny wasn’t going to bring it up and Patrick wasn’t sure what he hated more. Jonny lying to him by omission or the fact that he was letting him do it. 

Buffalo wasn’t bad. His sisters hearts beat were the soothing pitter patter that humans always had. Strong, healthy but not powerful. Not anything that made him look twice and wonder.

He did catch himself watching his mother though. Not for the sound of her heart but trying to guess if she knew what he could do. If she knew what he was. If she had any part on making him that way.

He wasn’t sure why, but he knew she did. She didn't show it. Not in the way she talked or looked at him, not even in the way she touched him. Gentle hands trying to smooth his hair or a pinch on the arm when he did something she didn’t like making everyone laugh. 

It was like a memory. Not his own memory, but more like a memory people get thinking about a scene from a movie or a line from a good book. You know how the event goes but you weren’t there for filming or the creation of it.

 It happened. And you saw it, were a part of it in a way even, but later; in a detached sort of way.

It was the same for him knowing his mother knew exactly what he was. She was the answer to everything. All he had to do was ask. Open his mouth and let the words come. But he didn’t.

It scared him to much.

What if he was crazy?

What if he was wasn’t?

He would leave it alone. He had no need to ask his mother crazy questions no need to make her worry any more than she already did about him. He knew she had taken up texting Jonny trying to find what was wrong with him.

He let it lie and just avoided looking her in the eye when he could. It was going to be fine.

He was almost right. The season crept closer everyday, most of his close friends were human. Nothing worthy of rousing the hunger that slept in his core.

Buffalo was mostly known for its ghosts and the occasional clairvoyant, and a smattering of weres here and there. There used to be mer’s in the lake but no one had seen any in so long they didn't even list them as locals any more. 

Regardless he went most of his trip without wondering if he could get away with drawing supernaturals away from crowds. He went without thinking about how easy ribs cracked if you pressed right.  It was a much needed relief.

It lasted nearly to the convention. 

It was strange. Strange that it would be a human who did him in. 

He dropped down onto his parents couch picking at the bowl of popcorn his father had balanced precariously on his knee when he glanced at the tv.

Sidney Crosby’s awkwardly smiling face grinned back at him.  He was giving a monotone sound bite about goalies or something when the screen flipped over to showing the man in question make a fool of one goalie after another. 

There had been talk that maybe Crosby was secretly a super but everyone who ever met him knew he was human. The only otherworldly thing about him was how easily he could track a puck and that was just natural born talent. Crosby’s center Malkin was a Leshy. Patrick didn't know much about Slavic supers but he remembered a special about it where Malkin turned from a bear to a blade of grass to a bee to a tree. It was neat. He wasn’t interested in Malkin at the moment though. He was interested how fluid Sidney was on the ice.  How easy he shifted speeds and effortlessly he avoided being crushed into the boards.

People could say what they wanted about Crosby’s whining tendencies the penguin was a top of the line hockey player. 

First class, he was definitely going to be remembered as one of the greats. His skills were rare and dedication to the sport was near unparalleled.

Patrick’s mouth watered. 

He wondered how hard it would be to dig hiss hands up under human ribs. Whether or not the heart would flutter in the palm of his hands light as a bird but pulsing with power and essence and hockey. 

He watched Sidney Crosby skate circles around his competitors and craved him with a ravenous hunger that was devastating.

He wasn’t ok. 

Nothing was alright.

He wouldn't be fine. 

He wasn’t human. 

He was hungry.


End file.
